STM Best & Brightest: meet WA’s showbiz and screen stars

AS part of PerthNow and The Sunday Times we continue the countdown of WA’s 100 Best & Brightest. Today we look at the heroes leading the the screen and showbiz.

THAT'S SHOWBIZ

TIM MINCHIN, composer/singer

Now in the Big Apple: Tim MinchinSource: Supplied

Home-grown musical comedy hero Tim Minchin has spread his wings and flown his London coop for the Big Apple. The New York move followed a huge year for Minchin, who toured as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. He flexed his composer muscles on Matilda the Musical, which raked in 47 awards, earned Tony and Grammy Award nominations and hit the West End and Broadway. It will open in Sydney next year. Minchin also squeezed in a guest spot as a drugged-up rock star on the US series Californication. Next he’s penning the music and lyrics for the musical Danny Rubin script, Groundhog Day.

SAMANTHA JADE, singer

Our bubbly Perth pop starlet has surged from strength to strength in the past year, having released three successful singles from her upcoming album, with the lead single Firestarter taking out Best Video at the 27th ARIA Music Awards. The song debuted and peaked at No. 9 on the ARIA Singles Chart and went platinum after selling 70,000 copies. Soldier went twice gold. Juggling her busy career with family time, while her mum Jacqui battles cancer, Jade has recently seen her single Up! selected as the official Socceroos theme song for FIFA. The 2012 X Factor winner also showed off her acting chops, starring as a young Kylie Minogue in the INXS TV mini-series, Never Tear Us Apart, earlier this year.

MICHAEL SMITH. actor/dancer/acrobat

An adventurous lad growing up in “Hammy” Hill, Michael Smith was teaching dance, acrobatics and circus to indigenous communities by the age of 15. Now 23, Smith has honed his skills at the WA Circus School, the National Institute of Circus Arts and the Flying Fruit Fly Circus. He has an Advanced Diploma in Dance from WAAPA and has worked as an actor, dancer and stunt double on local film Bran Nue Dae. Last year he was nominated as Best Newcomer in the Performing Arts WA awards. After performing in Sydney Theatre Company’s Storm Boy as Mr Percival, he formally upped sticks and moved to Sydney this year. He made the Top 50 in the 2014 series of So You Think You Can Dance and is now dancing in Bangarra’s national tour of Patyegarang, which will hit Perth in July.

ALICIA CLEMENTS, costume designer

At just 26, Alicia Clements is already taking the set and costume design world by storm. Graduating from the WAAPA in 2008, she made her first mark by winning the inaugural David Hough Award for Outstanding Achievement. Since 2009, Clements has designed 11 productions and she was made Black Swan State Theatre Company’s resident designer in 2012. Last year she and Will O’Mahony formed The Skeletal System theatre company. Now working in London, Clements has been a costume supervisor for a production of Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and has assisted on productions playing in the West End and touring venues throughout the UK. She recently won the Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship for Design in the Performing Arts, which will pour $10,000 into furthering her career overseas, once she returns from a quick trip home to WA to finish the designs for The Emperor of Atlantis by new Perth opera company Lost and Found.

PILERATS, music entrepreneurs

Born of a desire to throw epic parties, Pilerats are a Perth collective changing the face of the local music scene. The gang of 20-somethings mostly met at university — where they garnered a reputation for hosting wild events — but they decided to ditch their studies to concentrate on events promotions. Now the collective of eight core members is prolific.

“There’s the festivals, the club nights, some of us DJ, we have a digital magazine, a blog, a record label and we do video clips for artists,’’ Pilerats founder Alex Paioff says.

Members also run separate events and touring companies including Metric and ICSSC. Working on a video for US electronic star Skrillex’s song Summit, featuring Ellie Goulding, was a game-changing opportunity for the collective to gain international exposure. To date, the clip’s had more than 29 million YouTube views. Their most recent venture, Pilerats Records, has been signed up to Warner Music Australia.

Pilerats are also working on the second instalment of their boutique festival Circo, which will take place at Claremont on June 28. And, if that’s not enough, early next year they will host the fifth instalment of another festival, Wonderland, at Belvoir Amphitheatre.

SEAN KEENAN, actor

Sean Keenan originally wanted to be an engineer. Now the Busselton-born 21-year-old is starring in a new movie alongside Nicole Kidman and Hugo Weaving. Lucky he picked acting.

Keenan is famous for his turn as Gary Hennessy on the AACTA and Logie Award-winning drama Puberty Blues. His first full-time acting gig out of school, it has propelled him into Australian loungerooms and, it seems, he’s also caught the eye of film industry decision makers.

Filming for Strangerland, with Kidman and Weaving, began a few months ago.

“It’s out in the desert. I’m playing a character who’s a skater guy,” says Keenan. “He’s really different. It’s going to be a bit of time in make-up to get it done. It’s being filmed out at Broken Hill. The sets look really good.”

It seems a natural progression for a guy who, at 14, rocked his first ever audition so well he landed a role in Nim’s Island with Jodie Foster, although his Huck Finn storyline got chopped. “But I got to run around in Queensland for two weeks, and I got accent coaching. It was really cool for me and an awesome start,” he says.

He also acted in Drift, the WA-based surfing film starring Sam Worthington and Myles Pollard.

But his first break was for TV show Lockie Leonard when he was in Year 7. Keenan scored the title role, playing the lovable surf rat in the 26-part television series based on Tim Winton’s novels. Not only that, he won a TV Week Silver Logie Award nomination for Most Outstanding New Talent in 2008. Later, he was chosen to play Ted Pickles in another Tim Winton classic, Cloudstreet.

His success took him to Sydney where he’s been for the past three years.

His love of the ocean saw him recently announced as the face of iconic Aussie surfing brand Mambo’s coming 30th anniversary summer campaign. He also has the bright lights of Hollywood in his sights. He had a short trip to the US in December when he signed with an LA agency and will take part in auditions midyear.

“Working in America is something I’m yet to do and would love to do,” Keenan says. “I’ll just keep working on my accent.”

TYLER JACOB JONES and ERIN HUTCHINSON, theatre production makers

Fringe World favourites Tyler Jacob Jones and Erin Hutchinson are on a monster roll. They took out the highly coveted Martin Sims Award for the Most Outstanding New Artist at this year’s festival for their original musical Point and Shoot, scooping a cool $10,000. Just last year they won an Artrage Theatre Award for their Fringe World original production Falling to the Top: The Musical Trashtacular. Actor, singer, playwright and director, Jones, 26, and Hutchinson, 31, both studied musical theatre at WAAPA, expanding their skills with further studies. Thanks to their Fringe win, the pair are in the late stages of negotiating an appearance at the Brisbane Arts Festival, as well as locking in shows at Sydney and Melbourne Fringes. And next year they’ll take Point and Shoot on a world tour using their prize money.

SCREEN STARS

SHAREENA CLANTON, actress

Shareena Clanton, 25, is getting pretty used to being up for best newcomer awards. In the past 12 months, the WA actress and WAAPA graduate has been up for Most Outstanding New Talent at both the ASTRA Awards and the TV Week Logies’ Graham Kennedy Award. And in past years she’s racked up AFI and Sydney Theatre Award newcomer nominations. “I can’t keep pushing ’Best Newcomer’ anymore,” the Redfern Now star jokes. “Gotta be some sort of ’Best Actor’ at some point!” She also now has her photo, by Ben King, hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra dressed as Doreen — her character in the hit Foxtel prison drama Wentworth. Clanton hopes her career might help further other young indigenous people’s dreams. “I really want to break down this cardboard cut-out of what people perceive Australia is. (I want to say) ’Hey, we’re here, we’re alive, we’re present and we very much have these stories to tell’ ... You’ve got to be a voice for people who don’t get given that voice.” Clanton has a play and a film in the pipeline and will finish filming Wentworth’s season three. Then she’ll give LA a go.

ZAK HILDITCH, filmmaker

For knockers of WA’s lifestyle, Perth might be the ideal place to make a film about the end of the world. But for Zak Hilditch it’s been pure gold as the unusual landmarks from his home town have written him into film history. His apocalyptic thriller, These Final Hours, received a standing ovation after its screening at Cannes where it was the first film from WA to make it into the Directors’ Fortnight of the world’s most important film festival. And the applause from hard-nosed critics is still echoing in the lead-up to the film opening nationally on July 31. Set against the backdrop of the King Neptune carving from the former Atlantis theme park, the Kwinana Freeway and Malaga’s ice-skating rink, the film details the last days on Earth of a loser who redeems himself by rescuing a child. It all ends in one big party. It’s not the first feature film for the Curtin University honours graduate who spent years slogging away making backyard features and short films before moving to Melbourne. He’s also known for The Actress and Plum Role — also set in Perth. But it’s the first time Hilditch has competed in the world’s most prestigious film festival.

MATT HARDIE, filmmaker

Quirky stories with a twist seem to be Matt Hardie’s signature style and, fittingly, his life story follows suit. The 30-year-old Curtin University graduate moved to Sydney in 2006 to follow a dream of acting. After going to NIDA, he did some commercials and theatre productions, but fame and fortune eluded him. “I wasn’t getting a lot of stuff so I started going back to my skills as filmmaker,” he says. Directing is clearly a talent: Hardie took out the world’s biggest annual short film festival, Tropfest, in late 2013 with Bamboozled. Hardie, who also played the lead role, scored $10,000 in prize money plus industry attention and connections. In November, he’s off to the US where he’ll be pitching ideas to executives. One of those ideas is a TV sitcom about a couple of vampires; another is a new TV series based on some of the characters in Bamboozled; then there’s a sequel to Let it Rain, another of his award-winning short films.

RABIA SIDDIQUE, lawyer/biopic subject

In 2005, Perth woman Rabia Siddique was a 33-year-old military lawyer working for the British Army when, without any hostage negotiation training, she found herself in war-torn Iraq negotiating to save the lives of two top British soldiers. Then there was the time she found herself staring down an Islamic extremist armed with an AK47, and in a landmark court action against the British Army, which refused to recognise her role in the affair. If it sounds like a movie plot, you’d be right. The extraordinary life of Siddique, the mother of triplets, is being turned into a film. She was also a guest at this year’s Perth International Arts Festival where she talked about her book Equal Justice, which came out last year.

ANGOURIE RICE, actress

Thirteen-year-old Angourie Rice’s mesmerising performance in Zak Hilditch’s These Final Hours, in which she plays a child rescued in the final days of Earth, has received rave review from critics in Cannes. They are touting her as “the one to watch”. This former Subiaco Primary School student has already walked the red carpet in Cannes and New York, has a best actor award, and has international casting directors describing her work as “showing wisdom beyond her years”. Creativity is in her genes — her father is director Jeremy Rice. Her ease in front of his camera saw her progress to national television commercials and short films. Television viewers will soon see her in the lead role of Jade in the BBC/20th Century Fox feature film Walking With Dinosaurs and on ABC television in The Doctor Blake Murder Myseries.

TONY AYRES, director/writer/producer

Think of anything you enjoy on TV, or in Australian film for that matter, and chances are that Tony Ayres has not only had a hand in it but also won an award for it. Ayres, who was born in Macau but grew up in Perth, has become one of the nation’s leading lights in film and TV. The Slap? Yes, he directed and produced it and it’s now about to be filmed in the US. The Straits? Devil’s Playground? Camp? The Real Housewives of Melbourne? They were all produced by Matchbox Pictures, the production company that Ayres and four friends started up in 2008. Nowhere Boys? Yep, another Matchbox production and the 13-part series, created by Ayres, won a Logie this year. It’s also been like that since his name began regularly rolling up on big-screen credits for feature films he’s either written or directed: Walking on Water, The Home Song Stories, China Dolls and Double Trouble. ’’I feel really lucky to be working in the area I’m in,” he says. “And if I wasn’t in the industry I would still be doing it for fun anyway.’’ The latest TV series that he’s executive-produced is Old School, which went to air last month on ABC1, starring Sam Neill and Bryan Brown as a retired cop and ex-crim. As for Matchbox Pictures, it was acquired by NBC Universal in January.

Tomorrow: Don’t miss the WA men and women shaping our world — pollies, scientists and innovators.

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